ABSTRACT

This chapter examines modernism as a set of aesthetic practices and techniques, and hopefully this will be useful not just in coming to a basic appreciation of Ford's unique version of modernism, but also to understand what modernism was all about. If we look at modernism as a set of practices, we notice several salient features that occur in most works of modernist art: non-linearity; fragmentation; a focus on subjectivity; unreliable sources of narration; and a sense of self-awareness. The chapter explores how Ford experimented with these techniques, mainly in his novels The Good Soldier, Parade's End and No Enemy. William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury takes place over multiple generations simultaneously, in a style so baffling that the author toyed with the idea of using different colored ink to indicate different time periods. James Joyce's The Odyssey as his organizing scheme for Ulysses, where every event in modern Dublin has a Homeric parallel.